Rosie's Rose Garden – Life!

I am Rosie’s mom.  Rosie has been gone now over 2  1/2 years.  And we still miss her very much.  I came online today to visit her old tripawds blog.  Haven’t been here for a long while.  It was nice to visit and see her old photos and comments I had made over 2 years ago.  I never unsubscribed to Tripawds I guess having her here keeps her alive in my memories. So I have kept her blog online.  It was a bittersweet time.  We went thru so very much to keep her alive and she only survived a year.

I guess what I’m saying sounds negative, but we realized after all that we went thru that we were still going to lose her.  That was the hard part to deal with.  We really just prolonged the end and it didn’t really make it easier to take, in fact I think it made it harder.  We tried so hard to save her.  We spent lots of money and time trying to fix cancer.  But it was unsuccessful.  Maybe her kind of cancer was just not fixable.  Maybe others out there have another kind of cancer that you can beat.  I wouldn’t discourage you from trying,  but just be prepared that it may not work.  I tired every herb, conventional and holistic approach and it did not keep the cancer away.  She had Osteo Sarcoma the kind they get in their shoulder or leg.  It is just so sad that these beautiful animals get sick.  We lost her.  We miss her.  And we wish she hadn’t gotten this terrible disease.  We tried our best, we spared no cost.  But she is still gone.  Only our memories keep her in our heart now.

So for all the effort we gave,  and all the love that we received from Rosie, our Golden Retriever.  We are thankful that we had such a wonderful and faithful friend in her.  We finally got another Golden Girl.  Her name is Bella, she is now 2 years old.  She is very different from Rosie but very loving as well.  Thank you for listening whoever you are.  And if you are new to Tripawds, I’m sorry if you are here trying to find the answers to what to do for your pet.  You do find comfort here.  Rosie did do well for awhile.  But it is very difficult.  Hang in there and don’t give up.  Maybe your result will be better than mine was.  Thank You.  Rosie’s Mom.

I will remember you – “Rosie”

Rosie has been gone now for 6 1/2 months and it seems like just yesterday.  My greatest fear is forgetting.  I don’t want to loose Rosie’s memory all the little sweet and wonderful things she was to me.  Rosie was special to me.  As all our dogs are to us.  I feel terrible that I have not yet made any tribute to her at this late date.  My life became very busy after she passed and I had not yet spent the time putting her photos or videos into a tribute for her.  I feel terrible about this.  I want and need  to do this for her memory.  I keep putting it off now as it will be painful.   But I want to.

Below is a card I made for the Doctors right after she was diagnosed and had her first surgery for Oesteosarcoma.  She was not amputated right away,  she had Stereotactic radiation first.  This was her first card to the Doctors.  We were so thankful then that she had made it thru that and had no idea of what laid ahead for us the next few months.  It would be a year latter after this that we lost Rosie.  This card reminds me of how hopeful I was when we first started our Journey to Fight Cancer!

Rosie will always be loved by us.  Daddy and Mommy are not healing very fast.  We have been sad and lonely for “Our Girl” .  We are contemplating getting another Golden Girl.   I feel guilty even looking at another Golden.  But some say it is the best medicine for a “Broken Golden Heart”.  I don’t know.  I know sooner or latter we need a dog in our life, I just don’t know when would be the right time?    We will never loose our memory of Rosie.  I don’t know whether getting another dog is the right thing to do or not.  It is a difficult decision for us.  We don’t want to replace Rosie.  But we do want the companionship of a loving animal in our life again.    Can any dog ever replace Rosie,  –  No!   They won’t be “Rosie” ,  but I think our hearts would be big enough to hold another love.   It would be a whole new experience, a whole new chapter in our lives.  I’m just not sure when that Chapter should start.  But I do know I am very tired of being sad, and very lonely,  and wish my tears would turn into happy memories of Rosie.  My tears don’t bring Rosie back, they don’t make me feel better, I just get sadder.  My tears need to move on into sweet memories of my Rosie Girl.   We will love Rosie Forever!!!

To All the Dog Lover Friends whom we’ve met on Tripawds for the last year.

We’ve had a trialsome journey.  It was a year ago that we were facing Rosie’s amputation surgery.  It was a stressful time.  But we got thru it.  I was so nervous about the whole thing.  Here we are now about a year latter.  It seems like so long ago. 

As some of you know we lost Rosie on September 22nd, 2010.  A very SAD!!!!! day for us.  4 months ago.  We don’t know if  we’ll ever get along without her.  We miss her so very much.  Our heart just stopped that day.  It’s so hard to give your heart to these wonderful, faithful companions only to loose your heart when they have to leave.  Someone gave me a photo album which said : Remember how much I love you, but don’t be sad don’t even grieve, It was just my time to leave. 

I will never think there is a good time to leave.  I would never be able to pick a day for them to leave.  So probably it was best for us that she had to be put to sleep suddenly because if I had to pick the day to take her in I don’t think I could have done that.  I did hold her in my lap and looked at ther the whole time they    administered the dose of sleep medicine.  I can’t even say it.  It’s too hard but she is in no pain now.  She went thru so much this last year.

Sometimes I wonder if I did the right thing keeping her going for that extra year.  She was diagnosed in August 2009  She DIed September 2010.  Just a little over a year.  I thought she was going to make it 2 years maybe.  We did all the stuff, we gave her the K-9 Immunity, we gave her the vitamins the powders, the natural food, the grain free food and the raw diet to loose the weight.  We thought we were doing everything right.  But you no what you just can’t stop “C” (cancer). 

I had Cancer too 5 years ago.  They took me to death and back practically to kill it.  I’m still here.  But dogs don’t get the same kind of Chemo.  It’s too strong for them.

I miss her.  I just am not me with out her.  I don’t even think another dog will make the loss feel better right now.  And I don’t feel good about getting another dog right now.  So for now we are dogless and missing our Girl Rosie every day, every hour.  SHe’s just not there. 

Thanks for listening to Rosie’s story, her Journey of Life in her Rose Garden this last year.  It helped to journal all these things that we went thru and maybe it will help someone else make the decisions they need to make.    We had her for 12 1/2 years total. We brought her home when she was only 8 weeks old.  She was our child in a way since we don’t have children of our own.  Maybe we did a lot of things that may or may not have helped her.  But at least we know we did our best to give her quality of life until the end.  And we did it all because we loved her so much.  She will always be in our memory. 

Thank you so much for all your kind words and thoughts the last year. 

Best Wishes to All

Rosie’s Mom and Dad

I have no pictures to post of our Rosie Girl today.  I can’t bring myself to download the last set we took at the hospital that day.  A week without Rosie?  I feel like she needs to be picked up from somewhere, is she at my mom’s house, is she at the animal hospital, is she with daddy?  Where is she?  We know she is not in any pain any longer.  We know she is not aware of all the pain we’re going thru missing and grieving for her.  We realize even more now after a week without Rosie, how big a part of our lives she really was.  Everything we did we thought about Rosie and taking care of her. 

Getting home to let her out, feeding her, playing with her, taking walks, going for a swim, walking around her in the house, getting up in the morning and going to sleep at night.  All Rosie Times!  Her toy’s miss her, the house misses her, the cats miss her, we miss her!  Life will never be the same without our “Rosie Girl” .   As each tragedy in the past we have dealt with passes we always would say, it’s a “New Chapter” of our life beginning.  So we have a new beginning, even thou it is without Rosie, we have to figure out how to start over again, start a new part of life without Rosie.  We have our wonderful 12 1/2 years of memories to bring Rosie to life in our minds.  The mind is not enough right now.  I need the hugs and the kisses and the love Rosie gave to us and we gave to her.  She was my little something to love.  And we still need something to love.  There is a huge empty hole where I used to poor that love out to. It was her. 

We decided to have her cremated as we’ve done with all our animals.  We can’t handle the burial part.  It would have been too hard for us.  She was privately cremated and they put her ashes in a really nice wooden box with her name and dates on a little plaque on the front.  We received her box yesterday.  I didn’t get as upset as I thought I would.  Because I looked at the box and said “That’s not Rosie, that’s just a box with her name on it.”  It’s really not her.  But the box symbolizes her and who she was.  And it reminds us that we had a dog called “Rosie”  and the years in which she lived and that we loved her so much!    This way we can look at the box and always remember her and what she went thru and how we loved her.

The biggest lesson I’ve learned thru all this is to cherish every moment and hour and day you have with your loved ones and loved pets.  I thought we were going to have a little more time to say good bye.  I imagined this serene goodbye where we had time to hug her and be with her without the stress of the impending emergency in the background and her distressing condition.  That ruined the goodbye.  She was so tired, and she was loosing her battle.  It was a bad dream good bye.    We will remember the Sunday before, we had taken the whole afternoon to be with her stopped everything else on our agenda and just spent the afternoon with her.  We took a walk, sat out on the porch in the evening.  Played with her toys.  Rolled in the grass and she sniffed around, we took pictures of her sitting pretty and sitting with us.  We had fun with the timer that snapped 3 pictures at a time of the 3 of us sitting in the grass.  Like one of those photo booths, it was fun!  Rosie was tired, but she let us do all that with her.  Her last real day of Life with us.  Sept 19th, 2010.  After that the nightmare began.  So I’ll always try to remember that day instead of the day she died, because that was truely a “Dogs Day”! 

The Dr. called me yesterday too, the same day her ashes arrived.  So it’s all done now, all the things we had to do to for Rosie.  It seems like a closure process to saying goodbye.  But he confirmed that she had a very aggressive sarcoma.  They think it was a form of Oesteosarcoma but may be a whole new lession that formed on her chest bone. They said there are different kinds of Oesteosarcoma, this was an aggressive kind.  He is leaning towards that instead of Hermangeosarcoma.  But he said either way when it get’s that aggressive, it takes over the blood and makes it DIC whichmeans it does not coagulate any more.  He also said that ordinarily a core biopsy of a Sarcoma is safe, and that they did not expect it to bleed like it did.  He said she had a Rare condition that they haven’t seen much before where they bleed out like that after a biopsy.  So whatever it was it was nasty and aggressive and wanted to take Rosie away.  She didn’t have much time, even if the bleedout didn’t happen.  Her chest was swelling up every day as it had been bleeding inside the tumor.  I just can’t get the image out of my mind of her belly in the end.  I don’t even want to tell you.  But she endured well, she never cried, she just layed there and looked at me and ate a cookie.  I just feel so bad that she had to endure that final pain of her condition bleeding out.  I’ve got to move on and get that out of my mind.  She is out of pain now and that is what I have to focus on.  Peace and Rest for her.

Thanks for listening.  Love your pets.

Rosie’s Mom

We don’t know how to live without Rosie right now??!!   We are questioning everything that happened this week.  Did we make a mistake taking her to get checked out, did the Doctors make a mistake doing the Core Biopsy.  What went wrong?  All we know is she is gone and we can’t get her back.  Her memories and presence is very heavy at home.  Every where we turn  and everything we do there she is in our mind.   She was the center of our life.  We did everything around her for so long.  Especially since she had been sick, we took special care of her and made sure she had whatever she needed. 

All the things you take for granted, their begging, their laying in the bad spot where you have to step over them, just being there laying around when you’re there doing your thing.  Rosie was always there.  She’s always been there for 12 1/2 years!  She was always waiting for us patiently for us to stop doing what we were doing and come play with her or be with her or take her on a walk.  All I can say to all of you is do that right now.  Don’t waste time doing unimportant things that can be done latter.  Spend time with your best friend now while you still have them.  When they are gone you wish you could just take that walk, or play with that toy one more time.

Rosie was a happy girl.  Even when she did not feel good she was happy.  Her look melted me.  She didn’t like it when we got upset about anything, she constantly reminded us to be kind, loving, patient , if we could only display all the qualities perfectly as she did we’d be a pretty good human.  She was our Girl, to love.  We loved her so so much.   She was the dog of a lifetime.  She is not replaceable. 

We are sad, we are crying, we are trying to go on living every day, get up every day, carry on every day.  But without her our life will never be the same.  We loved her to the end I think she knew that.  But I just don’t want to remember her the way she was the last day.  I can’t get those images out of my mind.  I know time will help.  But right now time is moving so slowely.  We just want our Rosie Girl Back.  It seems like a huge nightmare to realize she is really gone.  We just expect her to show up around the corner or be there where we expect her to be.  This is clearly one of the hardest experiences we have ever had to deal with. Life is Empty without her.  We hope the days will get better I know it will take time.  For now let us grieve over Rosie, Our Love.

Rosie’s Mom and Dad

To everyone who fears loosing their beautiful doggy companion. Rosie has been the most wonderful dog companion I’ve every had.  We can’t imagine being without her.  We’ve had a rough summer.  It’s been very hot here in Florida and Rosie couldn’t stand to go outside for very long.  So exercise was at a minimum.  She did a lot of what you see in the first photo.  Taking a snooze during the day!   The weather is getting  a bit more tolerable now so we’ve done a few short walks in the evening.  She still goes in the pool but not as often as we’d like.  It’s a bit of an ordeal getting her in the pool as we have an above the ground pool.  But we make it fun.   She swims with her float coat on. 

Rosie had her 3 month exam 3 weeks ago and they said she checked out good. No metastisis of the cancer to her lungs.  Her blood work was better than before.  We were so relieved.  Only to become worried again in 3 short weeks since her exam.  We’ve noticed a distended area on her chest behind her front leg on her chest.  It is definetely hurting her when I touch it she doesn’t like it.  I’m so worried now about what that could be.  They did the xrays and said she was clear, how could they have missed this huge thing on her chest.  We’ve had Rosie on a Raw Diet and she has dropped some significant weight about 6 pounds!  Which makes it a lot easier for her to walk around.  But now that she’s lost the weight this thing is sticking out on her chest.  I’m not happy until we find out what it is.  We have to deal with it we can’t just ignore it. 

Rosie has been here a year after Diagnosis.  A year as of 8/11/10.  YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.  She made it a YEAR!!!   Last year I didn’t think we’d survive this long.  I want her to make it another year or longer but only if she’s not in a lot of pain.   Am I greedy?!    She’s also 6 months past her Amputation!   But we have an appointment Monday to find out what this lump is on her chest.  I’m not sure what to expect again.  Here we go again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!???????????????  I hate this feeling of uncertainty and worry.  It’s so unsettling.  Meanwhile the suffer in silence while we try to figure out what is wrong and how to make them feel better.

Thanks for listening. 

ROSIE'S A GATOR FAN!

ROSIE LOVES HER BONE!

ROSIE'S TRIP TO THE DR.

ROSIE ROLLS IN THE GRASS!

Hi everyone.  I haven’t forgotten my tripawd friends.  Rosie is still plugging along. Check out her first swim video!! We were all so excited.   She is recovering pretty good, she is having an increasingly hard time walking and tires easily.  We had a busy month it was April,  and I do accounting.  So my busiest month of the year.  But it’s over and I can breath.  Had no time to do what I wanted like talk about Rosie.

Above is my first video took me forever to figure out You Tube.  This took me awhile to figure out but I did it!   This was Rosie’s first swim a couple weeks ago with her Rehab Friends.   She is swimming in a dog pool in Orlando.  There is a pool there run by a non profit organization called : HIP DOG.  They are very nice people and are committed to helping animals recover and get stronger from age, or from amputation like Rosie.   She swims and gets a special trigger point massage  inbetween. She has been 4 times already.    She had never been in a body of water before.  This was her absolute first time.  She actually paddled her legs!  It was so exciting!   They told me that swimming was the best excercise for Tripawds as it is not a weight bearing excercise.  So we are trying to fit it in at least once a week.   We hope to have our little pool cleaned out soon so we can excercise right at home.  She already has her own life vest similar to the one in the video and picture below.  So we are excited about the swimming.  She is tired a lot and that worries us  But we have to keep remembering she is 12 years old and not like these other younger dogs I read about.

She is 2 months post amputation.  Her scar has healed up real good.  She even has some good hair growing in.  We are in the midst of redoing her supplements/medical treatments.  We are not doing the Metronomic Therapy as we have heard many concerns about using Rimadyl, one of the Metronomic drugs, on a dog that has Liver issues.  Well Rosie had most of her liver cut out last fall right after her Bone SRS Surgery to save her leg.  Then they cut out that Liver Tumor along with most of her liver.  So we have been nervous about how her body can handle pills, especially more chemo pills like Cytoxan the other Metronomic drug.   The side effects to all this is a little worrysome to us since Rosie’s Liver is compromised.  If she had all of her Liver, then I may not mind so much.  But I just don’t want to risk it.  For now her Liver #’s are good and I want to keep it that way.  So we started with Chinese Herbs this week.  Diagnosed by the Chinese Medicine Acupuncture and Herbologist at the University of Florida.  I have run into 2 other dogs both on these Chinese herbs that have said they lived 2 and 3 years so far since cancer.!!!  So it sounds good.  I hope it works.  We had her on K-9 Immunity and thought we’d switch to the Chinese Herbs since they are all natural and should have no side effects at all.   I’ll tell you more next time about the Herbs.  It’s late and I’m tired of playing with this You Tube stuff.  So we’re back.  Talk to you soon.!

Here are a few pictures  of her lately.

Rosie Swimming

Rosie in her new Help-Em-Up Harness

Rosie doing Sit Pretty Exercise!

So it came.  The stroller came before the weekend.  Yippie!!! Now we get to try it out this weekend.  So here we are Friday night snapping the contraption together.  And wow what a nice stroller!  It’s even Gator Blue, the Color or our Team;  “Go Gators!”  Of course since the Florida Gators, University of Florida is where I had all my surgeries, we have to support them!    

So here I am with my Gator Blue Stroller and my new Gator Collar on.  But guess what?  My stroller is too short.  My leg sticks out and it’s hard for me to relax in there!  My mom thinks I should ride in that!!???  She was so disappointed that it was not long enough.   She kept trying to make it work.  She put pillows in there, she made me sit in it with my head sticking out the top.  I kept thinking,  when will she give this a rest!  I was pretty tolerant.  But then I just got out.  Mom was disappointed.  

The next day she tried again.  She doesn’t give up!  But that’s why I’m still here so I won’t knock that.  Anyway she got my leash out and you know how much I love my leash!!!  oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!!! A walk, A walk, A walk!  I know what leash means we get to go on a walk and I always get so excited about that.  But I didn’t want to ride in the stroller I was going to walk all by myself!!   So she let me walk for awhile.   She brought this big blue stroller along and I was wondering what it was for???   

I don't need to Ride!

 Well I got tired and so I let her put me in there again.  But this time it was not so bad.  Hey this is GREAT!!!  I can see the whole neighborhood!  We walked down the whole street and I could feel the nice breeze blowing my hair!! It was not so  bad, hey this is actually kind of FUN!!!.     

So we rode, and we rode.   It is a little hard to get comfortable in this thing.  I wish it were a little longer as I have a long paw and it sticks out the front.  But I think it will be easier the next time.   

Strollin is not so bad! Look at me, Surfs Up! I'm Hangin' 5!

I could get used to this!